Experts believe the next WannaCry may go up for sale this Summer

Ransomware became a billion-dollar industry in 2016. The likes of Locky, Cryptowall, CryptXXX, and Cerber – which infect a network, often via email, then encrypt files or devices before demanding a ransom – each brought in over $50 million each last year.

And this trend has only sped up in the last few years. There was a threefold increase in the number of ransomware attacks between 2015 and 2016, according to Kaspersky.

Why? The attacks are easy to create – it’s now fairly simple to find low quality, customisable ransomware kits on the dark web – low effort, and offer a high reward. A new study from Citrix found UK businesses, for example, where willing to pay average of £136,000 [$172,000] to regain access to IP or business critical data, and increase of more than 360% on the previous year’s study.